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There Can Be Only One

Author: Nels, Diatribes, NBA Playoffs, Videos May 9th, 2008

I don’t remember where I read about it first, but someone noticed how in those There Can Be Only One commercials how they two players’ eyes always blink at the same time.

Here’s a really noticeable example.

Seriously? I am starting to think they’re fake. Or at the very least, heavily digitally edited. I mean, is it really possible that in every ad, two different people blink at the exact same time? I don’t think so. I think they probably edited it because someone found it distracting when they blinked at different times.

Whatever the case, they are really cool ads, but I do have a hard time watching them now without noticing the blinking. And now I inflict that suffering on you as well.

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What Are People Talking About?

  • They are extremely heavily edited, though the skill involved , to me, excuses this to a large degree. Watch the one with CHauncey and Dwight Howard, and then the one wth Howard and CP. In both cases, Howard is, by scale, MUCH bigger than the other guys in real life. Yet, in these ads, Dwight's head is literally warped to fit alongside his counterparts, and his half of the screen looks markedly different in each commercial.

    My friend works in tv editing for a comedy show that does this kind of thing sometimes, and we were talking about this recently. It seems they most likely had stars from playoff-bound teams record the speeches a few months back, timing their monologues to a pre-recorded voice track so everybody speaks at extremely close rates. Then, to make blinking match, they can cut moments from the filming of any monologue where the players both blinked and made a similar mouth-shape for the syllable intended in the ad. Matching these players up is just pure tv magic.

    I do like these ads a lot. When was the last season with two very strong ad campaigns (along with "Where Amazing Happens" and the Noah music?) And when was the last time we had a great season campaign, a great playoff campaign, and a great playoffs song? Who am I kidding, there's never been a great playoffs song. Can somebody get Ice Cube from 1995 to get on this?
  • Dammit Nels, now I'm going to have a weeks worth of dreams about those blinking eyes. Seriously, it was out of control in that Parker/Peja one.

    Brendan, it's funny you should mention the amazing shrinking Dwight Howard in those commercials. I noticed the same thing the other night when Kobe's head was the same size as Shaq's. Now that takes some serious CGI.
  • Niall
    You guys are idiots. Look up how the did it on youtube, there's a video that shows it all. All they do is put an ear piece into the players ears and read them the script so they read it along at the same rate and time. Your friend obviously doesnt know diddly shit.
  • @Niall, I think Brendan was mostly talking about the video editing, as opposed to the audio portion. But thanks for putting down the readers of this site. I hope you at least clicked on an ad for me while you were here.
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